October 11, 2010

TckTckTck “Today we took things into our own hands — lots and lots of hands.”

Below is a re-post from TckTckTck.org’sJoshua Wiese on some of the highlights from the 10/10/10 global work party. Congratulations to 350.org for their success!

Today we took things into our own hands — lots and lots of hands.

The message is clear. In the face of gushing oil wells off the coast of the Americas and Africa, disastrous heat waves and floods across Asia, the fastest melting of sea ice ever seen in the Arctic – we have problem and we’re going to fix it. That’s the spirit of today’s Global Work Party, which brought together people around the world at more than 7,300 events in 188 countries to create real climate solutions and inspire leaders to do the same. We’re still gathering stories and photos from the events today–you can see our favourites so far in our photo gallery–but here’s a taste of some of our favourite events of the day:

In North America, over 2000 events were scheduled to take place. Students in New York City painted the roof of their school white to save energy during hot summer days; parishioners it Atlanta weatherized their church; volunteers in Victoria are restoring seagrass meadows for their value in carbon sequestration; in Mexico City, the Mayor signed the 10:10 pledge to cut carbon emissions 10% in the next year.

In Beijing – just one hour south of where UN Climate Talks wrapped yesterday, having made little progress – over 30,000 students from 200 Chinese universities launched the “Great Green Initiative,” the largest grassroots, youth-led environmental campaign in China to date. You can read more about it in this blog post here.

1,600 high school students and community members in Iganga, Uganda came together to install solar panels and plant trees at the local school to promote clean energy and reforestation as solutions to climate change and to urge politicians to pass clean energy policies.

Hundreds of local residents from Port Elizabeth, South Africa, gathered to celebrate the release of endangered African Penguins who were rehabilitated after an oil spill.

Organizers in Irkutsk, Russia, held a day-long workshop on energy savings in a solar powered building as a solution to climate change and to urge politicians to pass clean energy policies. Elsewhere in Russia and Croatia, organizers signed up nearly 10,000 schools to plant trees, and volunteers in Moscow collected tonnes of acorns to plant and replace trees destroyed by this summers’ horrific firestorms.

Volunteers in the Marshall Islands planted native trees in their community to promote reforestation as a solution to climate change and to urge politicians to pass clean energy policies.

We’re not sure exactly how grand the scope of today’s actions will be. There are estimates that by the time the sun sets on 10/10/10 over the Pacific that over 100,000 trees will have been planted, over 100 solar panels installed, and hundreds of homes and buildings weatherized. Cyclists will have ridden over 1,000 miles and citizens will have cleaned up at least 500 miles of coastline.

Greenpeace International Executive Director, Kumi Naidoo said “[Today] is a challenge to our politicians for real climate action, not just talk. Citizens in almost every country are pulling up their sleeves to make the energy revolution a reality. The demand to our political leaders couldn’t be clearer: ‘We are acting on climate, it’s time for politicians to do the same’.”